


i'm bleeding, i'm not just making conversation

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Repression, Self-Hatred, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 09:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15167300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “I – I don’t know how to say it,” Sammy says, desperately wanting to because he just wants someone to understand, but he knows Jack can’t no matter how hard he tries, and Sammy’s so ashamed already even without his best friend knowing he’s faked his entire life. “I think I’ve been trying to say it all my life, but I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t say this out loud. Every goddamn choice I’ve ever made, every decision, every fucking – personality trait – it’s all fake, it’s all to stay hidden, I don’t think I’m a real person, I really don’t think I’m real.”[Sammy's internalized homophobia over the years.]





	i'm bleeding, i'm not just making conversation

**Author's Note:**

> The alternate title to this fic is I've Projected Some Bullshit Onto Fictional Characters.
> 
> Look, it just means a lot to me to see a character who's sexuality has so viscerally affected their entire life, and then I projected onto Jack and Lily too for good measure, because I don't half-ass super long fics about gay themes. I was thinking this was gonna be under 10k, but no, apparently I had some shit to say!
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys like it, check the tags for warnings, especially for homophobic language that some original characters use and some Sammy will use about himself. Not endorsing it, just saying it's a part of that lovely gay self-hatred we all know so deeply. Drop me a comment if you like this, or if you too have projected every emotion you've ever felt onto a fictional character, I promise it feels so good.

Sammy Stevens is four years old and doesn’t know what the word gay means, but he knows gay people have AIDs, he knows AIDs is a sickness, so he knows gay people are sick.

He hears his father at the dinner table one night, the news station blaring on the television set in the background say “When are those faggots going to get off the damn TV? They don’t need any more advertising.”

His mother, more the mediator, says “Well, it’s more of an issue of health. Of public safety. Not just gay people are affected –”

“Yeah, whatever,” his father says, always the blunt one. It’s where Sammy’s going to get it from someday. A last vestige of a connection with his father, who he’ll see for the last time when he’s twenty-four after an awkward handshake at a bus station. Neither of them would know it would be the last time, but neither of them would miss each other either. “You know they deserve it.”

 _Deserve it,_ Sammy eats his dinner quietly, not making a sound, letting his parents argue around him barely recognizing that he’s there with them. They usually don’t. He’s a sideshow attraction at best. _They deserve it. You know they deserve it._

He’s not sure what gay people are, but he knows whatever it is, they deserve it.

* * *

 

It’s the late nineties in suburban Ohio, and Sammy’s twelve and definitely knows what gay means now, the word spat every fourth syllable at his middle school like a curse. Sometimes it’s just an insult like asshole or dickhead, but sometimes the boys that get called gay and faggot come to school with bruises and Sammy doesn’t know who doles them out but knows that they must deserve them.

It makes something twist uncomfortably in Sammy’s gut, but he can’t say anything or it might happen to him, too.

He’s got a best friend who doesn’t use words like that, his name’s Charlie and he and Sammy ride their bikes home together most days, usually taking countless detours to avoid going home until dinner. Charlie’s dad drinks too much and Sammy’s parents don’t talk to him, so they want to avoid home as much as they can.

There’s not much to do in their small suburban life, but they make their fun, hanging out at the arcade and skipping stones on the lake when they’re in middle school, and then switching to cooler and hipper places when they hit high school.

Sammy thinks Charlie’s the best thing in the world, and thinks about him constantly even when they’re not hanging out. They have a lot of classes together in school – neither of them really _care_ about school – so they already spend most of the day and afternoon together, and they go to parties together too once they’re considered cool enough to be invited.

That doesn’t stop Sammy from thinking about him, though, his heart beating fast and palms sweaty, always doing something to get Charlie’s attention when he’s distracted by anything else.

Sammy doesn’t think much of it. He’s never had a best friend before. He thinks this is what having a best friend feels like.

He doesn’t even think about it when he dreams about Charlie some nights – sometimes they’re just hanging out, other times Charlie is looking at him differently, other times still he’s holding Sammy’s face in his hands, kissing him softly, and Sammy will wake up with a lurch and immediately try to forget.

 _Deserves it, deserves it_ plays in his head, and it helps block out the feeling, the longing, for a while, but Sammy’s fifteen when he starts thinking about kissing Charlie when he’s conscious. It’s hard to repress it once he’s realized that he’s repressing it, and shame pools in his gut when he looks at Charlie and want floods his system.

Still, the voice in the back of his head gets quieter some days, usually the days Charlie looks at him with a beaming smile and Sammy thinks _maybe, maybe he feels like this too?_

He doesn’t know how to ask. There aren’t words for it. No system, no formula. Sammy’s never met a gay person – not that he’s thinking of himself as gay, not that he could ever be gay – he’s never even seen a gay person on TV. There isn’t a way to express what Sammy’s feeling that he knows about.

The year is 2000, the turn of the millennium; Sammy’s a month away from turning sixteen and he shows up to school the first day after winter break to see Brian Maxwell’s car with the windshield smashed and the bumper dented and the word _faggot_ spray-painted on the side.

“Did you see?” Valerie Blake says when Sammy sidles into the back of homeroom, feeling unsettled and in a haze. “Did you see Brian’s car? I heard Dylan and Logan found gay magazines in Brian’s locker and they beat the shit out of him in the parking lot on the last day before break. I don’t know who did the car, though – Rickie’s got the reputation for spray-painting, but –”

“How could Brian be that fucking stupid?” Cheryl says, her eyes on Valerie but she’s addressing the whole room of tittering gossips. Sammy sees Charlie two desks over. He’s looking at Cheryl, interested but not too intent. “Someone was going to find out no matter what, you can’t keep something like that a secret, especially not with porn in your locker.”

“Did that actually happen though, or did Dylan just use that as an excuse?” Paul Simonson asks from behind Sammy, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I mean, Brian’s not exactly…”

He wiggles his hand. Sammy knows what he means. Brian’s not very effeminate – he’s not a jock but it’s not like he’s in the show choir, all he does is debate, he’s just some nerd that Dylan and Logan probably would have beat up one of these days anyway.

Sammy tries to tell himself that to stop the bile from coating his throat.

“Whatever,” Charlie says with a roll of his eyes, and Sammy’s heart is in his throat at what Charlie might say, what he might think. “I mean, they didn’t send him to the hospital or anything. I heard he just has two black eyes and a couple broken ribs. Worse things have happened.”

He sounds so flippant. Dismissive. Like it doesn’t matter, even though Sammy feels like there’s acid eating up his insides.

Charlie’s not done, though. “I mean, if he really is – well, you know – he’s lucky he got off with just that, right? I mean, people get killed for that kind of stuff all the time. I’m not saying that’s right or anything, no one deserves to get killed, but a couple broken ribs is like, nothing, especially for someone like – you know. That.”

 _That,_ is all Sammy can think for all of homeroom. _That, that, that,_ not even a word a real word for it. _That._

No one deserves to get killed, but people like _that_ deserve blacked eyes and broken ribs.

Sammy’s ribs feel a bit like caving in, he trudges through the halls with a haziness and lethargy to his movements, can barely hear what anyone’s seeing.

He sees Brian Maxwell just before lunch in the hallway – sees the purple swelling around his eyes, the way he holds himself gingerly as if he’s going to topple over, the split of his lip.

The way everyone in the halls skirts around him, whispering. Sammy knows it’s selfish, but all he can picture is people whispering about him like that.

He almost goes up to Brian to say something, anything, but he doesn’t want those whispers. He can’t stand those whispers.

_Deserves it, deserves it, deserves it._

He goes into the bathroom instead and throws up everything he ate for breakfast, wishing he was anyone but himself.

“Hey, dude, what’s the matter?” Charlie says to Sammy when he emerges from the bathroom after washing out his mouth and splashing cold water on his face to stop from crying.

“Sick,” Sammy says shortly as an answer. Charlie grimaces at him.

“Well, you definitely look sick,” Charlie says with an assessing glance. “You wanna skip the rest of the day, go play videogames or something?”

“Nah,” Sammy says even though he desperately wants to get out of the school building that’s suddenly collapsing in on him, confining him in place. “Hey, do you know what class Valerie has right now?”

“Chemistry, maybe, why?” Charlie asks, his eyebrow raised, but Sammy doesn’t answer.

He catches Valerie outside the chemistry wing, and they make small talk about their Christmas breaks for a minute before Sammy says “Hey Val, you wanna go out sometime? Like a date?”

Valerie blushes, but her smile is immediately wide and inviting.

Sammy wants to throw up again.

“Yeah, alright,” Valerie says, her demeanor suddenly changing, her smile going flirtatious. Sammy doesn’t think a girl has looked at him that way before. He’s certainly never looked at a girl that way.

“Cool,” Sammy says, feeling the opposite. “Can I pick you up on Friday? We can go to a movie or something.”

“Sounds good,” Valerie says, and they walk together down the hall, Valerie a step closer to Sammy than anyone would usually stand.

It takes a while, but Sammy stops thinking about kissing Charlie, stops dreaming about it, too. He kisses Valerie, but it’s dry and lifeless and he doesn’t dream about it afterwards.

* * *

 

The rest of Sammy’s high school life is an endless shuffling of girlfriends. He gets a reputation as a ladies man that he doesn’t deserve.

“Can’t tie you down,” Charlie would say with a raucous laugh as he punched Sammy’s arm. Charlie had been dating the same girl, Britney, for two years by the time they graduated. Sammy thinks they might have gotten married later, but he stopped talking to Charlie about the same time they graduated.

Nothing ever really happened between them, they just grew apart, Charlie toward Britney and Sammy toward – well, emptiness. The girlfriends weren’t exactly real connections. The only reason Sammy went through them so fast was because the idea of having sex made him spin out.

If he broke up with them within a couple months, it wouldn’t be a problem, so that’s what he did.  

Not that Sammy realized any of this at the time, though. He knows it all now, knows it uncomfortably well, but at the time he didn’t have to think about it, he just did it and didn’t understand why it made him so miserable.

He stops doing it about the time he meets Jack.

He starts the usual routine of rotating girlfriends when he starts college in Indiana, but he only makes it through two before he meets Jack Wright in his second semester in his introduction to media course. It’s a night course, they both sit in the back, and it takes a few weeks to get a conversation going.

“Hey, um, I was gone on Wednesday, could I borrow your notes or something?” Jack asks him during the third week of class. Sammy doesn’t even know his name is Jack yet, just knows he’s got wavy brown hair and dimples and long limbs and Sammy sometimes stares at him when he’s not paying attention in class.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sammy says, reaching into his bag to flip through his notebook and land on Wednesday. He winces at the illegibility of his writing, but hands the notebook to Jack anyway. “Sorry about my handwriting, but –”

“Oh, don’t worry, mine’s worse,” Jack laughs, and his dimples show when he does. “I’m Jack by the way, Jack Wright. You’re….um, Sammy, right?”

Sammy had started going by Sam when he got to college, trying something new, more adult, but he finds himself saying, “Yeah, I’m Sammy.”

“Cool,” Jack grins, his teeth a little crooked but it works somehow.

Sammy doesn’t get another girlfriend after that. At the time, he can’t say why. Looking back, it’s blindingly obvious.

* * *

 

Sammy’s twenty-two, three months from graduation, at a house party that one of Jack’s friends is throwing. He’s standing in the kitchen alone because Lily found someone she knew to go socialize with, and told Sammy he needed to stop being so boring and just go dance with someone. Like Jack. Jack’s dancing with his girlfriend Marissa. Sammy’s on his fourth beer and doesn’t really know anyone else at the party. He should’ve made some excuse not to come.

He’s well past buzzed by the time he notices the guy in the kitchen doorway is staring at him but once he notices, he stares too, his drunkenness taking down a couple of his carefully constructed barriers. Not all of them, never all of them, but enough that Sammy doesn’t quite care that someone’s watching.

The guy comes up to him eventually, introduces himself as Blake, and Sammy’s making out with him in the bathroom, the only door in the house that locks, within ten minutes. He’s not quite sure how it happened, the events leading up, but it feels better and worse than everything he’s ever done before.

He doesn’t remember much after that, only that he wakes up in someone else’s bed with an awful hangover, and he’s alone.

He stumbles the few blocks to his apartment – Jack, thank God, is not there, but Lily is, and she laughs when she sees Sammy because she’s vindictive like that.

She brings him a glass of water when he throws himself on the couch though, so he figures that she can have a free pass for today.

“I see someone had a productive night,” Lily says in a mocking voice and Sammy grumbles into the cushion before turning around to accept the ice cold water, gulping it down in one long drink. “When’s the last time you had a decent hookup anyway?”

“When’s the last time you had a decent…anything?” Sammy snipes, his brain not quite back online enough to have a witty comeback. Lily’s lip twitches.

“Well, don’t think I didn’t see who it was with,” Lily says, insufferably smug, and Sammy’s eyes widen and he feels as if someone kicked him in the gut. “Oh, honestly, relax, you’re in college, a drunken hookup doesn’t make you gay. But if you want Blake’s number, I have two classes with him.”

“Shit,” Sammy says miserably, sinking back into the couch. He’d spent all his life trying to keep this under wraps, try to keep it under the surface where he didn’t have to deal with it or even think about it, but it’s ruined now, the thoughts in his head racing and racing as he thinks about just how much he fucked this up. “ _Shit_.”

Lily, in an uncharacteristic show of gentleness, smooths Sammy’s hair back away from his forehead with a soft expression. “Hey. I was being flippant but… _are_ you gay?”

Sammy doesn’t answer, but he thinks the fact that he’s obviously near tears is answer enough. Lily certainly thinks so as she hops on the couch next to Sammy, putting an arm around his shoulder and squeezing. Lily usually isn’t affectionate like that.

“I once had a girl freak out on me like this after we…you know,” Lily says, half-manhandling Sammy to get his hair on her shoulder. “It happens to a lot of people.”

Sammy’s never told Lily that she’s the first gay person he’s ever known, ever been friends with, and how much that’s meant to him to see her happy and thriving, even if he’s overcome with the unshakable fear that someone’s going to hurt her every time she holds hands with a girl in public. He’s seen her get screamed at before, told she’s going to hell, and Sammy had nightmares about it afterwards.

He can’t say any of that out loud though, he just nods and lets Lily keep talking.

“It’s really not a big deal unless you make it one, this can mean whatever you want it to mean,” Lily says, voice soothing. “What do you want it to mean?”

Sammy shrugs, miserable. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ll figure it out,” Lily says, her voice full of confidence even if Sammy feels the complete opposite. “I know you, Stevens, you can do anything if you decide to commit to it.”

“What do you think I should do?” Sammy asks, and Lily sucks in a breath. Sammy usually doesn’t let himself be vulnerable like this, especially with Lily, but he’s at a complete loss right now.

“I think that you should figure this out and not repress the hell out of it like you do everything your life, don’t try to deny it,” Lily says when Sammy makes a small noise of protest. “Do _something_.”

Sammy nods, and Lily squeezes his shoulder tightly, not saying anything for a moment but when she speaks again, she almost sounds a little choked up. “Well. You obviously know that I don’t care if you’re gay. The reasons I hate you will never have anything to do with if you like dick or not. And Jack won’t care either, he won’t think any differently of you. He’s always been supportive of me, so he’ll always support you even if he is the straightest boy alive.”

Sammy laughs, it’s a joke, he’s meant to laugh.

Jack comes in from his room down the hall, Sammy can hear his footsteps, and he and Lily quickly jump away from one another, Sammy wiping quickly at his eyes.

“Oh my God, were you two showing affection for each other?” Jack sounds absolutely delighted as Sammy and Lily launch into their respective denials.

“I would never, how dare you accuse me of –”

“If by affection you mean we’re seconds from strangling one another –”

Jack laughs, leaning over the back of the couch to hook each of his arms around Sammy and Lily’s neck. “Aww. You guys are so cute with your refusing to admit that you’re friends.”

“We are _not_ –”

“If by friends you mean sworn enemies –”

Jack punches Lily’s shoulder and ruffles Sammy’s hair, a carefree grin on his face, not aware of the moment he just missed. Sammy doesn’t let himself lean into Jack’s touch, trained himself out of it a long time ago.

“Adorable,” Jack says, voice half-mocking but half-genuine. “I’m going to meet Marissa for breakfast, but let’s go to a movie later, the three of us, yeah? To celebrate this rare showing of affection on both of your parts. It might never happen again, after all.”

“Only if we’re going to the new X-Men!” Lily yells after Jack as Jack ducks out of the apartment with a teasing wave in their direction. She turns back to Sammy with an affectionate shake of her head. “He’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Sammy says, not letting his own affection for Jack fill his voice. “Ridiculous.”

* * *

 

Sammy takes Lily’s advice about doing something.

He can’t do anything at the school, near the school, the idea of anyone around him knowing, seeing him differently, makes him wish he was invisible. Shame coils in his gut whenever he thinks about someone he has to see every day knowing, the idea of a student or a professor or one of his acquaintances even seeing him in that different of a light makes him start shaking, let alone the idea of Jack knowing.

The thing is, Sammy does _know_ , even if almost all of him is in denial about it, he’s always _known_ , just like how he knows that the idea of Jack is inextricably tangled painfully with the idea of being gay, but he doesn’t ever let that thought boil over to the surface of his mind, it’s deeply repressed in a tiny corner that’s going to make itself known very soon but isn’t quite here yet.

So he decides he has to prove it to himself even though he’s been proving it all his life, and he drives the two hours up to Chicago a couple of weeks later and finds the most obscure gay bar he can.

No one would know him, no one would see him, he could pretend it never happened tomorrow.

There’s too much glitter in the club, but Sammy orders a drink without stumbling too much, even if the guy carded him with a knowing smirk. He’s overage but he’s shaved recently and when he’s clean-shaven he looks much younger. He regrets that now, he wishes he looked older.

His heart’s in his chest, he feels like he’s going to throw up, he can’t even approach the dance floor so he snags a barstool instead. He starts with a long drink, but then decides he’d better pace himself since he’s here alone, and only takes sips after that.

“Hey,” the bartender comes up to him an indeterminate amount of time later. Sammy’s been watching the room around him, the way everyone here seems more comfortable than he does. “Can I get you something else?”

“I’m good,” Sammy says, he still has about half his drink left. The bartender smiles crookedly at him.

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” he says. “You from out of town?”

“Purdue,” Sammy says with a shrug and the bartender grins.

“College, nice,” he says. “What for?”

“Journalism,” Sammy says, heart beating even louder when he realizes that small talk isn’t made in places like this without a reason. “I graduate in May.”

“Cool,” the bartender says. “I’m Colin, by the way.”

“…Sammy,” Sammy manages to get out and the bartender’s smile is almost gentle like he realizes how hard that was for him.

“Sammy, cool,” Colin says. “Hey, I’ve got another couple hours on my shift, but stick around, alright? I’ll find you afterwards.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sammy finds himself saying, something constraining painfully in his gut, but he pushes it down because he suddenly also feels lightheaded, in a good way, like something makes a little more sense.

It feels like the pressure’s off now, like he can finally relax just a little. He doesn’t need to talk to anyone else to get the experience here he’s looking for, and if he starts spinning out, well, he has a couple of hours to decide whether or not to just leave. He can sit here and breathe for a minute.

It’s about an hour later, Colin’s brought him a second drink and done some talking that definitely constitutes as flirting, told him he’d be off in thirty, and Sammy’s skirting around the dance floor to head to the bathroom. He knows what’s presumably going on in there, but he’s also nervous and needs to splash some cold water on his face for a second before he goes back out.

It’s when he’s on his way back that he quite literally runs into someone – someone he recognizes, someone he knows, Carson from his program, who he’s had six or seven classes with, who he’s studied with countless times in the library before exams, who he’s gone to parties with more than once, who’s good friends with Jack.

Carson’s eyes go wide beneath his glasses when he recognizes Sammy. Sammy feels as if the room is collapsing in on him.

Carson says something that Sammy can’t here, because he’s pushing past him, along with everyone else in the club, trying desperately to get outside into the cold February evening where the bitterly cold air can distract him, just for a second, from the mass of paranoia inside of him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was a bad idea.

Sammy can’t even stand outside the club, paranoid energy thick in this throat, his hands shaking, and he stumbles down the street until he finds a wall to lean against away from anything, anyone who might bother him.

It’s past eleven in the winter, but it’s also Chicago, so Sammy sees a few people out in the distance on the streets. He had to park a few more blocks from here, but he can’t remember in which direction now, if he stumbled toward or away from his car. He can’t think about driving right now though, he just has to think about breathing.

Carson was at the club too – maybe he was trying to keep this a secret – he wouldn’t tell anyone, right? He would understand like Lily understands, he would keep it quiet. But Sammy didn’t know that for sure, _couldn’t_ know that for sure, and he quickly leans further down the alley to vomit up his two drinks. Sammy’s not exactly a lightweight, but his anxiety always makes drinking worse.

 When he looks up, he realizes that the alley isn’t empty, that there’s a girl giving some large guy a blowjob down at the end of it. Sammy looks away, embarrassed, and tries to stumble back into the street but someone’s noticed him by now. “Hey! The fuck you looking at?”

Sammy tries to just walk away, but whoever noticed him has surprising speed, and he suddenly finds that the back of his jacket is being pulled at.

“Hey, I didn’t mean –” Sammy starts, but the guy, the one who was getting the blowjob, Sammy recognizes in a second, punches him in the face the second he spins around.

“The fuck’s happening?” He hears another voice, but Sammy doesn’t look up, pain suddenly blooming from his cheekbone as he gasps out.

“Fucking creep was watching,” the first guy says, and Sammy tries to gasp out a defense of himself, but the guy hits him again in the stomach this time before Sammy can get a word out. “One of those faggots from the Excelsior down the street, I bet.”

Sammy’s thinks vaguely about something snarky to say about how if the guy knows the name of the club, he probably knows the club a little too well, but he realizes that another, much larger guy is stepping forward. That wasn’t anyone who he’s seen before – what happened to the girl, the one who –?

The guy grabs Sammy by the back of his neck. “You get the fuck out of here, alright? And don’t fucking call the cops, you hear me?”

“Hey, hey leave him alone,” Sammy finally hears the girl’s voice, slightly scratchy, from down the street. “I saw him, he’s just a drunk, was just throwing up –”

“Did I fucking ask for your opinion?” The larger guy snarls in her direction before his fist hits Sammy’s face again, and Sammy’s reflexes are so slow that he can’t even get his hands up to try to block the punch. “Get out of here, fag.”

Sammy tastes blood in his mouth as he stumbles away as fast as he can, no thought in his head but how to get the fuck away from that situation as fast as possible.

It occurs to him once he’s a couple blocks away that whatever those guys are doing to that girl is probably at least as bad as a couple of well-aimed hits, that he should definitely call the cops, but the idea makes him want to throw up again, and he can already tell that he’s got two black eyes, maybe a cracked rib –

He remembers Brian Maxwell in the hallway of his high school. _Deserves it, deserves it, deserves it._

Sammy gasps out, both at the pain and the realization that almost everything he’d done all his life was to avoid this, right here, avoid the broken ribs and black eyes and split lips, avoid calling the cops, avoid standing up for himself, avoid avoid avoid, because if he didn’t think about it, he didn’t have to play out the repercussions, didn’t have to admit to himself that he _deserves it_.

Sammy sees his car in the next lot – it’s dumb luck that he stumbled in the right direction, but he takes it. He drives the two hours back, half-sobbing the whole way, the pain in his chest mostly from the hit but also from the pieces sliding into place around him, that his entire life is a fraud, a carefully constructed fake.

What’s worse – to be a faggot or fake? Either way, he deserves whatever he gets. That much he knows for sure.

It’s well past one in the morning by the time Sammy pulls into the parking lot outside his apartment complex, and he silently begs to the universe to let Jack and Lily be asleep, let Jack be at Marissa’s and Lily with whatever girlfriend she’s seeing now, just let him crawl into his bed and not have to explain himself quite yet.

The universe doesn’t listen – Jack’s sitting at the kitchen table with his headphones in and textbook open when Sammy turns the key to let himself inside, and Jack’s face crumbles the second he catches sight of Sammy’s face.

“Oh my God,” Jack’s on his feet in an instant, and Sammy can’t stand it, can’t stand the concern and worry in his face as Jack rushes toward him, a hand brushing back his hair where there’s a cut on his forehead from one of the guys’ rings. “Oh my God, what happened?”

Sammy just shakes his head, his throat coated thick with shame. There aren’t words for this, not any that he can use.

“Who did this?” Jack says, his voice gaining a hard edge. “Who the fuck did this to you?”

Sammy shakes his head again as Jack runs a hand over his cheek, presumably checking for damages. “Sammy, please just tell me what happened, and we can go to the hospital –”

“No,” Sammy manages to rasp out, just the word almost too hard to say. “No, don’t.”

“Something could be broken,” Jack says, his lip quivering just a little. “Sammy…do we need to call the police?”

Sammy shakes his head rapidly. “No, it – it didn’t happen here.”

“Where’d it happen?” Jack says, his voice soft and measured, but still has a steeliness to it like he’s prepared to go comb the streets for whoever did this to him. Sammy would be grateful if he wasn’t so ashamed. “Sammy, please tell me, you’re scaring me.”

“Chicago,” Sammy says as an answer, it’s specific enough for Jack but vague enough that nothing can come of the answer. Jack’s eyebrows shoot up into his hair.

“Chica – you mean you _drove_ back here? Like this?”

Sammy nods and Jack curses under his breath, and Sammy knows it’s not at him but it makes him feel so much smaller.

“I’m getting peroxide and Band-Aids,” Jack says, half under his breath, and points at the kitchen table. “Sit. Don’t move. You might not be going to the hospital but you’re accepting my help whether you like it or not.”

Sammy knows better than to argue with Jack – no one can tell Jack no, especially not Sammy – and sits down, still nearly shaking out of his skin.

Jack comes back with the bandages they keep in their bathroom a minute later, his face a little softer as he sits in the chair opposite Sammy, pulling it closer so that their knees touch. He cleans the cuts on Sammy’s face a little clumsily, and too gentle for Sammy to take right now. He doesn’t deserve gentle.

“Sammy,” Jack says quietly as he puts a bandage over Sammy’s eyebrow. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Sammy makes a noise of agreement and Jack sighs. “Then please just tell me. Whatever it is can’t be worse than what I’m imagining.”

Sammy laughs bitterly. He can’t help it. Jack stares at him, eyes wide and almost frightened. He should be. Sammy is.

“I – I don’t know how to say it,” Sammy says, desperately wanting to because he just wants someone to understand, but he knows Jack can’t no matter how hard he tries, and Sammy’s so ashamed already even without his best friend knowing he’s faked his entire life. “I think I’ve been trying to say it all my life, but I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t say this out loud. Every goddamn choice I’ve ever made, every decision, every fucking – _personality_ trait – it’s all fake, it’s all to stay hidden, I don’t think I’m a real person, I really don’t think I’m real.”

Sammy realizes he’s crying when Jack hugs him, squeezing too tightly, but it’s worth it, it feels good, and Sammy hates that it feels good.

“Of course you’re real,” Jack says into his shoulder. “Sammy, you’re my best friend, nothing will _ever_ change that. _Nothing_ , alright? Please just tell me. Whatever it is, I can help you.”

“You can’t,” Sammy says, shaking his head, a growing lump in his throat, but he knows that if he doesn’t say it now, he never will, and if there’s one thing in his life he doesn’t want to be fake, it’s Jack. “I – I was at. At a club. At a – a _gay_ club.”

He can’t look at Jack’s face, but Jack’s grip on his knee tightens, just slightly, but he doesn’t let go, doesn’t back away in disgust. Sammy keeps talking. “Lily told me I should do something, so I did, I went to this club, but I saw – saw someone I recognized there, and I spun out, I ran outside, I threw up in the alleyway, but there were these two guys out there – there with this girl, I don’t know if they were hurting her, but they sure as hell didn’t want me to see them but maybe that was just because I’m a faggot and they do this to any faggot they see.”

“You’re not –” Jack starts, his voice impossibly soft, but Sammy can’t stand soft, and he interrupts.

“I am,” Sammy says, choking on the words. “I’m a faggot and I’ve known it all my life even if this is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud.”

“Hey,” Jack says, taking a hold of Sammy’s chin, making him look him in the eye, and Sammy wishes he’d do anything but that, but Jack’s smiling at him, a little teary, very soft, Sammy doesn’t know how to handle it. “Hey, you’re my best friend. This doesn’t change anything. You could’ve told me at any time. Hell, I’ve known Lily’s gay for five years now. You had to know I wouldn’t take it badly.”

“I know,” Sammy says, “and that makes it worse, because I _knew_ you wouldn’t hate me but I was still too much of a coward to say anything.”

“It’s a hard thing to say,” Jack says, putting an arm around Sammy’s shoulder and pulling him a little closer to him. Sammy lets himself lean into the touch when he normally wouldn’t. “Lily couldn’t get the words out either, the first time. It’s okay, Sammy. It doesn’t make you a worse person. It doesn’t make you fake, it doesn’t make you not real.”

“But it does,” Sammy says, not knowing how to string the words together articulately, but knowing he’s right about this. “The first time I ever asked a girl out was after a guy at my high school got beat to shit in the parking lot for being gay. The only reason I had so many girlfriends in high school is because I was in love with my fucking best friend and I only realized that just now because I repressed it for so long – and I _remember_ , I _remember_ knowing I was in love with him and then purposefully blocking it out, making the memories different, so that I could keep it all under wraps, keep it all in the back of my mind, but it changed _everything._ ”

Jack’s quiet and Sammy can’t stop talking now. “I shuffled through those girlfriends because the idea of anyone thinking there was anything wrong with me, anything amiss, not quite ordinary, made me want to die. I dumped them before they expected me to sleep with them. I just went through the motions, did what I saw guys do on TV, what I thought a boyfriend should be, said everything like a line in a movie, like it was a script, all while I couldn’t stop staring at fucking Charlie Mason for five years straight, but I repressed every fucking memory of it until right now, everything I’ve ever done has been a lie, I’ve been lying to everyone but especially myself because I fucking hate myself for this, I do, I wish I was anyone but me.”

Jack doesn’t talk right away, but his arm is secure around Sammy’s shoulder, and he pulls Sammy into him as Sammy tries not to cry, but it’s a lost cause.

“I don’t,” Jack finally says, his voice thick with emotion. “I don’t wish you were someone else. I don’t think you’re a fake or a fraud. I think this is just a part of you that you weren’t thinking about until now. A _big_ part obviously, a part that changes some things, but it doesn’t change who you are. You’re the same person, you just – you just make sense now. Everything you do suddenly makes sense to you, there’s a reason for it, but that doesn’t mean you were any less of a person before you understood that. Okay?”

Sammy doesn’t quite know if he believes Jack, but he wants to comforted right now, wants to comforted so badly even though he doesn’t deserve it, so he nods. He nods and Jack squeezes his shoulder tighter.

“You’re not freaked out?” Sammy says after a second, pulling away from Jack, trying to regain some of his composure if even that’s a little difficult with two black eyes.

Jack smiles at him, the same smile as always. “About you? No. Nothing you say can change the fact that you’re my best friend and always would be. What I – what I am freaked out about is –”

Jack looks down with a sigh and a grimace, and Sammy’s anxiety ramps up again, but he knows Jack well, can read him well, and can tell that whatever this is doesn’t have anything to do with him. He bumps their knees together so that Jack knows he can say whatever he has to say.

“The way you described your girlfriends?” Jack starts hesitantly. “Like you’re reading lines from a script? I didn’t realize it until you said it but – but that is _exactly_ how I feel about Marissa.”

“Oh,” Sammy says after a second, his brain catching up with all of the possible ramifications a second later. _“Oh_.”

“Like we’re in a play and I’ve got the role of Romeo and I’ve just got the script memorized now,” Jack says, the look in his eyes a little far away. “Sorry to make this very dramatic evening about me but – but shit, I guess it’s time for me to think about what I’ve been repressing.”

“Could just be – be a bad relationship,” Sammy says, trying to comfort Jack, show him that there was another, easier way out of this. “I mean, you don’t have a lot in common.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, but then sighs. “The thing is, though, I can relate to… _a lot_ of what you just said. A lot of it. Way too much of it, actually, for it to be a coincidence. I think I’m gonna have to be introspective for a change. I don’t really – really know what to do about this.”

“I’m sorry,” Sammy says, guilt bubbling up in his gut along with a barrage of other emotions that he didn’t want to think about, and wasn’t that just the story of his fucking life. “I didn’t mean to – to fuck things up for you, I –”

“Sammy, you didn’t fuck anything up,” Jack says, voice gentle. “Obviously this is something that – that I’ve been dealing with anyway. And anyway, even if I am – well – it’s not like it’s a death sentence.”

Sammy can’t say anything to that, because that’s how he’s always treated this, like a death sentence, like there’s no possible way for him to be happy, have success, do anything at all in life if he recognizes that he’s not straight, not normal, that he deserves all the shit that happens to him.

“Well,” Sammy says, swallowing his feelings, “maybe you should just start with breaking up with Marissa, see where you go from there.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, eyes a little foggy, but his voice is firm. “Yeah, you’re right, I should. I’ll call her tomorrow. It’s a little too late tonight – you should get some sleep, make sure nothing’s broken, and we’ll revisit the idea of taking you to a doctor in the morning.”

“Jack,” Sammy protests, but Jack stands up, pulling Sammy along with him by the elbow.

“We’ll revisit it in the morning,” Jack repeats, and no one, especially Sammy, can say no to Jack so he doesn’t even try. Jack’s expression gets softer though, as he and Sammy fall into step to walk back into the hallway, and Jack puts a hand on Sammy’s shoulder before Sammy can disappear for the night.

“Hey,” Jack says, soft again. “I – I love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Sammy says right away, a lump quickly growing in his throat. “Of course. You’re my best friend, I – I love you, too.”

“Good,” Jack smiles, lighting up. “I just wanted to make sure that you – that you knew that.”

Jack gives his shoulder one last squeeze before he shuts his bedroom door.

Sammy falls back against his own door, the finally puzzle piece of his repression finally, after all this time, sliding into place.

The way he used to feel about Charlie Mason when they were fifteen and rode their bikes across town was exactly how he felt about Jack now, just twenty times stronger.

You’d think Sammy would have learned better by now, but whatever it is that he feels for Jack isn’t a childhood crush – he loves Jack, he loves Jack so much it almost hurts, will hurt, will always hurt if he lets it overtake him.

Sammy does what he’s best at. He stows the emotion away, lets it run rampant underneath him, but doesn’t let it come back into his thoughts.

* * *

 

It’s been weeks since that night, and somehow Jack was right, that nothing has really changed between them. They haven’t talked in-depth about what happened, not even with Lily, even though Lily was furious when Sammy wouldn’t tell her who beat him up. Sammy would’ve told her, but didn’t because that would include telling her about Jack. Lily doesn’t know about Jack yet and Sammy can tell Jack’s afraid to tell her.

He doesn’t quite know why – it’s Lily after all, Sammy wasn’t afraid of Lily knowing about him. But he can tell it scares the hell out of Jack from the way Jack’s jaw clenches and his eyes narrow. Sammy just knows Jack so instinctively, which is its own kind of terrifying now.

“I asked Lily how she knew she was gay,” Jack says out of the blue when he and Sammy are sitting cross-legged on their couch, watching The West Wing after class and not doing their homework. “She immediately assumed I was trying to get a lesbian to date me and chewed me out for five minutes.”

“She…definitely thinks you’re straight,” Sammy acknowledges with a grimace.

“Oh, I knew that already,” Jack says, shaking of his head in exasperation. “Her nickname for me to her lesbian friends is My Brother the Perfect Picture of Heterosexuality – all capitalized for dramatic effect, of course.”

“Of course,” Sammy says. “Do you know why she –?”

Jack sighs. “Lily’s always prided herself on being different, on being unique. And I guess she’s always seen me as – the opposite, I guess. Or her opposite, at least. When you grow up with a twin, you’re always trying to be the different one.”

“I’m sure,” Sammy says, because there really isn’t another answer – Lily overemphasizes how different she and Jack are pretty much constantly.

“Anyway, she eventually just gave me a flippant answer about how she knew she was gay the second she saw Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was distinctively unhelpful to my motives for asking the question,” Jack rolls his eyes and takes a big bite of his sandwich.

“I’d think Alyson Hannigan was more her type,” Sammy says, keeping the conversation light, and Jack laughs but he can tell this isn’t going to stay light for long.

“Did you have – I don’t know, a moment?” Jack asks, sounding unsure for a moment. “I know you said you always knew but…I don’t know, I guess I’m hoping for something concrete that I can point to.”

Sammy shrugs. “I don’t think so. I remember _not_ having crushes on girls in elementary school, but nothing with any actual substance. I didn’t have Sarah Michelle Gellar moment.”

It’s unsettling, talking about it out loud, but it feels so natural when it’s just with Jack, Sammy wishes he would’ve come to this realization sooner and maybe he would’ve felt less lonely.

“I do remember crushes,” Jack says hesitantly, “but now I’m wondering if they were actual crushes or if it was like – like a script, like with Marissa. Like I knew I was supposed to, so I just _decided_ to like a girl because I was supposed to instead of actually liking her. I don’t know. I’m just – confused, I guess. I just want to _know_.”

Sammy thinks of what Lily said to him, and figures he can take the liberty to pass her advice onto her brother, since Jack’s clearly not going to ask for it himself. “I think you can just decide, Jack. This can all mean – whatever you want it to. You can say it means nothing or you can say it means everything. It’s all your choice.”

Jack half-smiles at him, Sammy can tell how tired he is, especially when Jack drops his head onto Sammy’s shoulder, resting his forehead there for half a second.

Jack’s always been a little more tactile than Sammy, but every time Jack’s touched him since that night, Sammy feels like he’s drowning, because he doesn’t know if Jack could ever possibly feel the way that Sammy does about him, and doesn’t know if he even wants Jack to. Jack deserves a happy life, he doesn’t deserve whatever Sammy would bring into it.

“Breaking up with Marissa was a relief,” Jack says, voice firm, as he looks back up at Sammy. “That’s a good sign, right? That it was a relief.”

“Depends on what a good sign is,” Sammy says, “but I think it’s probably a sign of something.”

“A sign of _something_ is a good sign,” Jack says, grimacing. “I just want to know, I just want to have an _answer_ , you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Sammy says, letting his hand rest on Jack’s shoulder for half a second to comfort him before he pulls away.

“Thanks for listening to me ramble,” Jack mutters, blushing a little bit, not quite looking at Sammy. “I didn’t want to bombard you with this because – I don’t know, I don’t want you to think that I’m putting some kind of pressure on you because you helped me realize this about myself. I don’t want you to think you have to support me in this because you’ve experienced something similar but – I just never realized that someone else feels the same way I do about things like this.”

“Hey, me neither,” Sammy says, suddenly emphatic, realizing he needs to give Jack the same support Sammy got from him, that he wasn’t the only one who needed a support beam. “C’mon Jack, you – you can talk to me about anything. _Anything_. Right?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, smiling. “I know.”

* * *

 

“Since Jack’s been extremely mopey about his breakup, I’ve decided that we’re all going out this weekend,” Lily announces on Thursday night to Jack and Sammy, who look up from the notes they’ve been exchanging from their ethics class with twin grimaces. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, the three of us haven’t been out together in ages, and now that Stevens doesn’t have two blacked eyes anymore –”

Sammy folds in on himself without meaning to, glaring at Lily. Jack’s gaze is concerned on his own.

“If it’s a party on campus, sure, but not a bar or a club,” Jack says, and Sammy realizes that he’s let out a breath. “It’s two weeks ‘til graduation, I’m sure campus is crawling with parties.”

Graduation scares the hell out of Sammy, but much less now than it used to, now that he’s sure that Jack and Lily are always gonna stick by him, now that they both know. They were always going to move to Chicago together, and now they’re two months out from leaving, and Sammy’s actually genuinely excited, which he rarely is about things in his life.

“Alright, we’ll find a party,” Lily says with a shrug. “Maybe a sorority party so we can get Jack laid.”

“Don’t,” Jack says, turning bright red as Lily laughs. Sammy feels a sting of sympathy and wishes Lily would have a bit more tact, but that’s hoping for a miracle.

They end up at a party of one of Lily’s acquaintances is throwing, which means Lily knows practically everybody and Sammy and Jack only know the occasional journalism major, but that’s fine, Jack clearly isn’t there to get laid tonight and Sammy would rather just hang out with Jack in the backyard anyway, sitting on the patio and watching drunk twenty-somethings chase each other through the yard as they play beer pong.

Jack looks a little anxious, so Sammy takes it upon himself to make sure Jack can relax for a change and gets copious amounts of alcohol for them. They’ve almost graduated, they deserve it, and Sammy feels like being drunk wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world tonight, and Jack’s certainly happy enough to get drunk with him.

It’s nice to see Jack loose and relaxed after a few drinks after he’d spent the past couple of months wound up so tightly. Sammy’s affection for Jack is harder to hide when he’s drunk, but he’s become an expert at it over the years.

At some point, Lily drags a girl over to introduce her to Jack, but they only make awkward small talk for a few minutes, Jack clearly not into it and the girl knows it, and she leaves a couple minutes later.

“What was that about?” Lily groans in Jack’s direction, her voice a little sharper than it should be over something so minor. “Honestly, I bring you out to have a good time and meet a girl and all you do is shoot the shit with Sammy. You already do that every day of the week.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I enjoy that, I don’t really enjoy being pawned off to random girls I don’t know,” Jack said, a little too drunk to sound too sharp or annoyed, but he’s doing his best approximation of an eye-roll.

“You could’ve known her,” Lily argues because she can never help herself, “I swear, you’re so closed off to new experiences –”

Jack laughs, there’s a bitter sound to it that Jack usually doesn’t have. “Whatever, Lily.”

“I swear, if you would just expand your horizons a little bit –”

Jack’s eyes flash angrily, he’s always had a bit of a problem with keeping his temper in check especially when it comes to Lily. “Would you leave me the fuck alone, Lily? It’s just a party.”

Lily rolls her eyes, hackles raised, clearly ready for a petty argument. She and Jack argue a lot about stupid shit, but Sammy feels like he knows why Jack is picking this particular fight. “It’s like you just _have_ to date six foot tall blonde models all the time –”

Sammy knows what Jack’s going to say next before the words come out of his mouth. He’s always had a problem with impulse control, too.

“Lily, I’m gay. Leave me alone.”

Lily’s jaw drops. It would have been funny if Jack hadn’t gotten up in the next second and headed inside of the house, leaving both Lily and Sammy just to stare at one at each other, Lily in shock and Sammy with deep discomfort.

“He’s not serious,” Lily says after a moment, looking at Sammy as if to reassure her. “He can’t be serious.”

“I don’t know,” Sammy says, mainly because he doesn’t, but also because he doesn’t want Lily to jump down his throat. “Why are you so sure he’s not?”

“He’s just – he’s always been _so_ straight,” Lily says, a little faintly. “I mean, he’s always gone _exactly_ with the grain, been exactly what people always expected him to be, he can do no wrong, he doesn’t – he doesn’t do things like this, he’s the perfect child, gonna have the perfect wife and kids, that’s always been who Jack’s going to be, that’s always what my parents –”

“Sounds like he was probably pretending, then,” Sammy says slowly, “to make your parents happy.”

“Did I –?” Lily stops short, shaking her head. “I mean, I’ve been out since I was sixteen, what was he thinking, how could he keep something like that from me?”

“Maybe because you call him _so_ straight at least once a day,” Sammy mutters under his breath, and Lily’s eyes flash in his direction. Much like her brother, Lily has trouble keeping her temper in check, so Sammy quickly stands up. “I’m gonna go find Jack. Maybe – maybe don’t come home for a while. Give yourself some time to process.”

Lily opens her mouth to argue, but Sammy disappears before she can tell him off. He hopes she listens, but knows it’s halfway to being a lost cause.

He can’t find Jack anywhere in the house, and Jack’s drunk enough that he’s not going to drive right now – at least Sammy goddamn hopes he’s not going to drive right now – which means he’s probably trying to walk home, which is fine, it’s only a twenty minute walk, but Sammy would rather walk it with him even if Sammy’s also a little more than tipsy right now.

He’s right, he usually is when it comes to Jack, and he catches up with Jack on the edge of campus, about ten minutes from their apartment complex. Jack isn’t swaying too much as he walks, and it’s not all the way dark yet and Jack’s tall and muscular and probably not in danger walking alone, but it still makes Sammy feel better. Especially because even now, Jack’s practically shaking, whether with anger or terror or both Sammy doesn’t know.

“Hey,” Sammy says as he falls into step next to Jack, and Jack half-turns to him, not quite smiling, but recognizing that Sammy’s there. “Are you alright?”

“I think so,” Jack says, voice a little unsteady. “Is Lily –?”

“She’ll be fine,” Sammy says, deciding not to expand. “A little confused, but she’ll be fine. I guess you – I guess you came to your decision, huh?”

Jack sighs. “Not really a decision, more of a….I don’t even know what to call it. But yeah.”

“I’m…proud of you,” Sammy says, the words tasting a little foreign in his mouth. “For saying it out loud. I don’t’ know if I could ever do that.”

“Didn’t you already?” Jack asks, forehead creasing. “To me?”

Sammy shakes his head. “Not…not like that. With the right words.”

He of course means that he called himself a faggot – he knows that’s not the right word, that’s a word that makes him want to disintegrate into dust and stop being alive.

“Alright then, say the right words,” Jack elbows Sammy in the side. He’s starting to sway, and Sammy takes a hold of his elbow.

“Now? But you already know,” Sammy says, but there’s an expectant look in Jack’s eye. “I – okay. I’m – I’m – gay. Okay? Happy?”

The words take a lot of out of him, even if he’s not exactly showing that to Jack. He practically jumps out of his skin when Jack smiles at him, leaning against his side.

“Proud of you,” Jack mutters, and Sammy smiles at him.

Sammy gets Jack up the stairs to their apartment with minor difficulties, but Jack doesn’t seem to want to be desposited into his bed like any ordinary drunk.

“C’mon, it’s barely ten,” Jack says, his voice hazily drunken but still pretty solid. “We can at least – watch TV or something.”

“Alright,” Sammy laughs as Jack trips over his own feet on the way to the living room. He’s usually much more coordinated than that. Sammy grabs the TV remote and flips to a Friends rerun, figuring Jack’s probably not going to need anything more mentally stimulating than that. “Happy?”

Jack falls backward onto the couch, nodding. Sammy comes around to sit on the couch’s other side, and Jack moves closer to him. Sammy doesn’t know if Jack would’ve done that if he was sober but Jack’s warm and solid as their legs brush and Sammy doesn’t mind, not at all.

“Lily will get over it,” Sammy says quietly after a second. “She’s just so used to seeing the two of you as complete opposites, but she’ll come around.”

“You know us so well,” Jack mutters, a little sarcastic, but when he smiles at Sammy, it’s very genuine. “You know me better than I know myself, I think.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sammy says, quashing his usual affection for Jack, but his tipsiness is making that a lot less simple than usual, especially when Jack’s eyes are so soft on his.

“You know how I knew?” Jack says, his voice losing its sense of boundaries, and Sammy shakes his head, heart in his chest. “When you were talking about it. It wasn’t even the stuff about your girlfriends. It was that during all that pretending, you were in love with your best friend. And I though oh. _Oh shit._ That’s me, that’s what I’m doing, I’m in love with my best friend.”

“Jack,” Sammy whispers, wondering if he’s already passed out and this is some kind of fever dream. “Jack, do you know what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying I love you, obviously,” Jack says, his smile wide and genuine and fearless in a way Sammy’s never could. “It’s okay if you don’t love me. I just wanted you to know, okay?”

“Okay,” Sammy says hazily, not quite knowing which way is up. “I – I do love you, though. I do.”

“That’s good,” Jack says. His eyelids are drooping. Sammy thinks vaguely that he’s probably falling asleep. Sammy doesn’t think he’ll ever fall asleep, the high of what Jack just said too much to handle.

That’s the last thought he remembers having that night.

* * *

 

Sammy wakes up, still on the couch, his and Jack’s limbs overlapping, Jack’s head pressed against his shoulder.

It looks uncomfortable, Sammy thinks when he opens his eyes, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable, not at all. It feels right.

It feels right, and now that Sammy’s sober, it scares the hell out of him. He quickly disentangles himself from Jack, standing up, his limbs still half-asleep. Jack stirs, and then blinks blearily up at Sammy. Sammy can’t take it, and side-steps the couch and heads into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water that he gulps down quickly.

“Hey,” Jack croaks, groggy, and then he’s heading toward the kitchen too and Sammy wants to run somewhere else, but he can’t, he’s rooted to the spot. “So. You definitely remember what happened. Good to know.”

“Jack, I –” Sammy starts, helpless, but Jack interrupts as he slides onto one of the kitchen chairs, rolling his head to crack his neck.

“So I remember that I told you I loved you,” Jack says, conversational, as if this sort of thing happens every day. “Though I don’t remember what you said back to me. Based on your behavior, I would guess it was something negative – which is fine.”

He says it like he means to reassure. Something twists in Sammy’s insides. “No – Jack, I said I loved you, too.”

“Oh,” Jack says, clearly happy, but he creases his eyebrows. “Why are you being weird, then?”

“Because – because –” Sammy doesn’t know how to articulate this mass of emotion, the way _deserves it, deserves it, deserves it_ is playing in the back of his brain, how the image of Jack with two blacked eyes and broken ribs makes him wish for any life other than this one. “Because I don’t know what to do now. I love you but – but I don’t ever want you to get hurt.”

“Not seeing the correlation,” Jack says slowly, getting to his feet and taking a hesitant step toward Sammy. “Is this – is this about the club? You getting beat up?”

“Good things don’t happen to – to people like us,” Sammy says, voice shaking slightly. “Good things never happen. Just because I love you doesn’t stop the bad things from happening – it makes them worse.”

“Sammy,” Jack says, blinking at him. “Bad things happen to everyone, not just –”

“But they happen _more_ ,” Sammy emphasizes, “and when they do, I’ll deserve it. I always deserve it, I always –”

“Stop it,” Jack says, harsh for half a second, but there’s something so gentle in his expression as he bridges the gap between them and hugs the breath out of Sammy. Sammy can’t help it; he hugs back, even though he knows he shouldn’t. “You don’t deserve anything bad, okay? That doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen, but you don’t deserve it, not ever.”

Sammy can’t argue with Jack, even though he knows Jack’s wrong, but Jack’s impossible to argue with so Sammy doesn’t even try.

“The fact that you love me – it’s a good thing, Sammy, it’s _good_ ,” Jack says into Sammy’s shoulder. “It’s so good, you have no idea – God, I’m so happy right now, Sammy, I wish you were happy, too.”

“I am happy,” Sammy says, because that is the other emotion, the one underneath all of the guilt and shame and fear. “I just – I just don’t want anything to change, I always want to be with you, I don’t want you to end up worse off because of me –”

“Sammy, I feel better right now than I have in years, maybe ever,” Jack says as he lets go of Sammy, the look in his eye emphatic and leaving no room for argument. “I love you. I’m _in_ love with you, probably have been in love with you forever and just didn’t realize it.”

“I love you too, of course I love you too, but I just can’t turn off my fucking head,” Sammy says, guilt welling up, because he can never just be happy, never be good enough. “I just keep thinking about the club and the bruises and the black eyes and I just can’t – I don’t ever want that to happen to you –”

“Hey, we do _not_ have to tell anyone else,” Jack says, squeezing Sammy’s hand. It grounds him, holds him in place. “I just freaked out over telling my lesbian sister, I don’t think either of us is in the right place for a Facebook relationship update, and that’s _fine_. We do not have to be open about this – but that doesn’t mean we can’t – can’t be together. Right?”

He sounds insecure, just for half a second, and Jack’s never insecure. Sammy can’t have that. He squeezes Jack’s hand back.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “We can – we can try. I just want you to be happy, Jack, more than anything, and I don’t know if I can –”

“You make me happy,” Jack says as if it should be obvious. “I don’t care about anything else. And if…if I make you happy…”

“Jack, of course,” Sammy says, not knowing how Jack could think anything different. “I don’t think I’d ever be happy without you. Ever. I just don’t know if I deserve –”

“Shut up,” Jack shakes his head, affectionate. He leans in, angles his head as if he’s going to kiss Sammy, but he stops short, his breath ghosting over Sammy’s face.

“Is this –” Jack starts to ask, a little brokenly, and Sammy bridges the space between them to kiss him.

* * *

 

 _Deserves it_ usually isn’t in repeat on Sammy’s head, not for the next few years, even though he goes through bad spells like when they leave Chicago for Los Angeles and when Shotgun Sammy is being particularly brutal, but most of the time, his head is quiet, filled with Jack smiling and laughing instead, full of ideas about marriage, about having kids, about feeling comfortable in his own skin for the first time, about the idea of really having a future, one where he was happy.

That all went to shit, of course. Sammy wonders why he expected anything less.

Jack’s gone days before Sammy’s thirtieth birthday. Sammy spends it in the police station, shaking with adrenaline, begging for information, but Sammy’s not Jack’s next of kin. Sammy’s not anything. Sammy’s known Jack for eleven years. Sammy’s been Jack’s boyfriend for eight. Sammy’s been Jack’s fiancé for three months. But he’s not Jack’s next of kin, and the police don’t have to tell him jack shit.

He’s nothing. He thought he’d stopped being nothing a long time ago, because he had Jack, and now Jack’s gone and he’s nothing again.

Everything’s been uprooted, pulled out of the ground, Sammy feels like his intestines have been ripped out of his body. He can’t eat, he can’t sleep, and all he can think of is _deserves it, deserves it, deserves it._

Of course he deserves this. He’s never deserved anything more than this. He wishes it was him who was gone, disappeared into thin air to god knows where. He wishes he was dead.

He should’ve told Jack no, he didn’t love him, maybe if he’d said that and disappeared from Jack’s life, Jack would still be here, Lily would still have a brother, and Sammy would be miserable but he’d know that Jack was alive and that would be enough for him.

It doesn’t stop Sammy from trying to go after Jack, even if trying is too strong a word for what Sammy did. Yes, he tore up his life’s parts and went to King Falls, but that wasn’t a sacrifice. His life was already in tatters, the tearing Sammy did was minimal at best.

He knows he’s not going to find Jack, he knows that Jack’s gone and there’s no hope, but he kids himself, he kids himself because he’s a fake and a fraud and a nothing and nobody, and he’s pretending, always pretending, he’s never stopped pretending even for a day.

He deserves this and he knows it. This is his fault and he knows it.

Something stutters in his logic when Emily goes missing, though – because Ben doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve a life of emptiness and desperation, not like Sammy. Ben is everything that’s good in the world, all that Sammy has left. He’s so pure, untainted, innocent, Sammy has no idea why this is happening to him. Ben’s a good person – he doesn’t deserve it.

The world is righted when Ben changes the world to bring Emily Potter back home. Of course – of course Ben can do it. Ben _loves_ Emily, his love brought her back home. That makes sense – that makes perfect sense. Ben’s love for Emily is so strong, the universe can’t help but reunite them.

It comforts Sammy, somehow, that bad things happen to him because he’s a bad person. He doesn’t know why it comforts him – maybe because it gives him hope that Ben’s life will end up good no matter what, that Ben will get what he needs and deserves.

That’s what Sammy has to tell himself anyway, to get himself to Perdition Wood and the Devil’s Doorstep without giving Ben so much as a goodbye.

Ben will be fine. Ben will get what he deserves, which is a life of love and happiness with Emily Potter. Sammy will be a footnote – he knows Ben loves him, knows Ben will mourn him, even if he doesn’t understand why. But he knows Ben will have to end up happy in the end, because that’s the order, the structure of the universe that Sammy has always believed in.

Because wherever Jack is, he’s not coming back. So Sammy has to go to him.

Sammy doesn’t think of the Void as a place – the Void is nothing, the nothing that’s been calling for Sammy ever since Jack disappeared into it. Sammy’s always been nothing, always been a useless fake, so it’s high time that he accepts it and enters into it, into the end, into his final chance to see Jack again.

He doesn’t know if he will. He knows Jack is there, knows it with all of himself, but doesn’t know if he’ll be able to find him within all that nothing.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing Sammy does ever works.

At least that’s what he’s thinking until he’s outside the school parking lot and Ben literally runs into his arms, sobbing into his shoulder, and all Sammy can think is _shit, shit, shit, I did this, this is my fault._

Then he can’t help but be sick with relief that he’s not dead, that he didn’t disappear, that the Void and Rainbow Lights both wouldn’t take him, because the idea of hurting Ben Arnold beyond repair was one too many transgressions in Sammy’s life. He’d fucked up with Jack, he’d fucked up with Lily, he’d fucked up every goddamn thing in his life, everything except Ben, and he’d almost damaged him irreparably too.

“Sammy, I think you should stay with someone for a while,” Troy says when Ben finally lets Sammy go. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be alone right now.”

“Well, I’ll, uh, have to stay with someone,” Sammy says, a blush rising to his face. He didn’t think he’d have to explain himself. “My apartment – there’s nothing there, I moved out, sent all of my stuff to a storage locker up north.”

“Why?” Ben asks, the hurt in his voice sounding like he already knows the answer.

Sammy can’t look at him. Sammy’s used to shame – shame is the first emotion he remembers having – but he’s not used to feeling it over things like this. “So you’d think that I left for the big city and I wasn’t –”

“Right,” Ben says slowly, neutrally, but Sammy can tell from the set of Ben’s jaw that this is going to turn into something later. “Well, you’re staying with me, no questions asked, do not collect go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

Sammy doesn’t argue. Much like Jack, Ben is impossible to argue with once he gets his mind set on something.

It’s the next morning when the conversation – Sammy doesn’t want to call it a fight, it’s not a fight, it’s a _conversation_ – that he’s been dreading arrives. Ben probably thought they’d been through enough for one night, but it’s noon the next day and Ben’s making coffee while Sammy sits at his cramped kitchen table, and Ben has a look on his face like he’s about to start _talking_ which isn’t a good sign right now.

“I would have looked for you, you know,” Ben says shortly as he slams a cup unnecessarily loudly against the counter top. “I hope you know that.”

“I was hoping you’d be angry enough not to,” Sammy says quietly, deciding that today is a time for honesty and Ben wouldn’t appreciate sugarcoating. “Since I didn’t make it to your celebration, and I’d been such a shit lately –”

“I also hope you realize,” Ben says as if Sammy didn’t say anything, “that someone can be angry at you and love you at the same time. I don’t really think you’re grasping that one, so I’m gonna repeat it. I’m _kind of_ pissed at you right now. But that does not change that you’re my best friend, I’m so relieved that you’re here, I love you more than anything.”

“Ben –” Sammy starts helplessly, guilt boiling in his stomach.

“Equal to Emily,” Ben says, “more than anything else. Got it?”

“Got it,” Sammy says, because there really is nothing to say to that that Ben would accept. “I don’t always understand it, but got it.”

“You don’t have to understand it as long as you know that you’re my best friend and that I love you and always will. Even when I’m pissed at you,” Ben says, firm at first as he steps closer to Sammy to set the fresh pot of coffee on the table. His lip quivers a little, and his voice is a little softer when he adds “which I’ve decided I’m not anymore. But please, please don’t do that to me ever again.”

“I won’t,” Sammy promises, trying to meet Ben’s eyes. Ben steadfastly looks away for  a second, Sammy knows he’s blinking tears away, and Sammy reaches out to hug Ben instead so that Sammy can pretend he’s not seeing Ben cry.

Ben accepts the hug, squeezing the life out of Sammy in return.

“It’s not just me,” Ben says, not letting go. “You have people here who love you – we all love you so much. Emily, Troy, Mary, Ron – what would any of us do without you? And don’t say we’d be fine. We wouldn’t be. Especially me.”

“Someday, you would’ve…” Sammy starts, but Ben cuts him off.

“Nope,” Ben says, squeezing tighter. “I would’ve never stopped looking for you. _Ever._ If you were in the Void, I’d pull you out. If the Rainbow Lights had taken you, I would’ve shot them down again. Don’t you ever think I’d just leave town and let you go.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Sammy mumbles. “I was just, you know, hoping you’d see reason.”

Ben pulls away from him to glare, but it’s half-hearted and more sympathetic and pitying than anything. “It wouldn’t be reason. Not ever. Sammy – I feel like I’m going to be saying this a lot – but you deserve a good life, you deserve to be happy.”

“I –” Sammy knows he can’t argue with Ben.

“I know that’s not gonna happen without Jack, but that’s why I’m going to find him,” Ben says, determined as ever. “So you can be happy – you _deserve_ to be happy. I’m going to be repeating that a lot from now on, so get used to it.”

“I…know you think that,” Sammy starts, a helpless sick feeling in his stomach. “But I don’t, Ben, I don’t. I’m such a fake, I’ve spent my whole life pretending – I’m barely a real person. Jack’s the only thing about me that was real, and he’s gone – don’t you see? You saved Emily, you deserve that happiness, because you won, you beat the odds, it was all you. Me? I did nothing. I just pretended, just kept pretending.”

“Sammy, that doesn’t matter,” Ben says, his eyes going wide. “Of course you’re a real person – and I wouldn’t be half the person _I_ am without you. Do you think I would’ve found Emily without you? Absolutely not. I would have broken down and never recovered. You were alone – for so long, you were alone. But now, now I can help you like you helped me. How can I make you see that you deserve happiness, too?”

“You can’t,” Sammy says, a little desperate. “We’re just – it’s entirely different, Ben.”

“How?” Ben says, wide-eyed and practically begging Sammy to explain but he can’t, he can’t do that. “How is it different, Sammy? Sure, the circumstances, of course, but it’s not that different. We both had people we loved taken from us. Just because you’re –”

Ben stops suddenly, his eyes going impossibly wider. Sammy looks at the floor.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Ben says slowly and Sammy wishes he was smaller. “You think that – that because you’re gay, you deserve the bad things that happen to you. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re…not _not_ wrong,” Sammy huffs, trying to make a joke out of it, but Ben won’t let him, his hand reaching out to curl around Sammy’s wrist and hold so tightly Sammy thinks he’s going to cut off his blood flow.

“You’re really on like, universe brain levels of self-hatred right now, huh?” Ben says softly, a little guiltily, and Sammy wants to say that it’s not his fault, that Sammy’s always been like this, has been his entire life.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Ben, but you can’t undo a lifetime of this shit, of awful shit happening to me,” Sammy says, and Ben doesn’t let him keep going.

“Maybe not, but Day One of trying starts right now,” Ben says, his eyes glinting, and the idea of Ben making a new notebook all about Sammy’s self-hatred makes Sammy laugh internally. “I’m not happy if you’re not happy, alright?”

“And you always get what you want,” Sammy sighs, knowing that trying to fight Ben on this is futile, that Ben is going to keep on loving him no matter what Sammy says or does. It’s the main reason that Ben reminds him of Jack – not just their stubbornness, their lack of impulse control, the way they’re impossible to argue with – but that they both love Sammy even when Sammy has no fucking clue why.

“Damn right I do,” Ben says with a firm nod. “Case in point…”

He stands, going over to his backpack that’s laying on the ground against one of his shelves, and pulls out a paper Sammy immediately recognizes as a new contract. He puts it in front of Sammy with a raised eyebrow, pen already in his hand.

“The station is down right now,” Sammy hides a smile.

“But it’s going to be back up soon,” Ben says. “And you’re going to be here when it is. Right?”

Sammy doesn’t know whether or not he deserves Ben Arnold, but he knows that Ben deserves to be happy – and if signing the contract is what it takes to make Ben happy, Sammy has to at least try.

He takes the pen.


End file.
